Recently my inbox as been full of Christmas details, questions, and lists. My phone has been ringing with family members calling for similar reasons. Blogs already are full of Christmas idea posts. Amazon is constantly reminding of their "super saver shipping" deal.

Normally I feel energized by this pre-Thanksgiving gift buying rush. My goal for years has been to not buy a single gift in December. I haven't actually met this goal yet, but I have been pretty close. I love the idea of having my gifts bought (or at least most of them) before December 1st and therefore having plenty of time for Christmas projects with Jonah. The busy December schedule normally doesn't stress me out because I'm not rushing around buying gifts.

So my December 1st deadline is only 9 days away and find myself with only several gift bags full of CVS bargains(does anyone really want those?) and the 2 gifts that I bought for Jonah yesterday. So fine, I'm behind on my gift shopping. I don't really have an excuse, I just am. But the part that is bothering me is that I keep forgetting that I have to buy presents! I think I think that I already have it taken care of, maybe that I have had a plan in place for months. But that just isn't true! And when I realize that I haven't started my shopping I just don't really care that much.

I understand that my heart hasn't quite mended yet from losing our baby and knowing that I am not able to have any more, but apparantly my mind isn't working either. My sister-in-law said I that I am normal now (though I KNOW she is almost done with her shopping she just isn't admitting it to make me feel better) and my husband said "welcome to the rest of the world." I'm not sure how I feel about those statements. A small part of me screams "NO!". I want to be my old over-planning self, I want her back, I want to care about little details again, I want to care about them so far in advance that my I drive my husband crazy.

My friend Sarah said that I could be like that again if I wanted to. If I really wanted to get something done in my old self ways, then I would.

Maybe that is it. Maybe I just care less about things that don't really matter because I found out this year what matters. Life. Death. Friends. Family.

Now that I have that figured out I'm going to go slap some gift tags on the 15 tubes of toothpaste I have stockpiled and call it good (right after I place a big Amazon order).

It was time to make the move from an 8 year old dollar store cardboard organizer to a homemade "I'm serious about couponing" coupon organizer. Here is both my old one and my new and improved coupon binder:

I used 2 packages of baseball card holders and cut them done from 3 x 3 to 3 x 2. I then punched new holes and a put them in a small binder. Since my goal is to save money I tried to make my saving money tool as cheaply as possible. I already had this small binder, from college, along with some paper already cut and hole punched to fit it. I used the paper to form dividers between each section. My mom had one package of baseball card holders that she gave me (but she didn't give me the sports cards that were in it, so don't worry dear brothers)and I bought another package at Office Depot from $2.66. Since then I discovered that they have pacakges of 10 at my Dollar Tree for $1 (because its the dollar store!). The ones my mom had are the best quality but I couldn't seem to find any that sturdy. The ones from Office Depot and the dollar store are a little flimsy and I worry about the new holes I punched. My friends and I thought a little scotch tape or those little sticky circle reinforcers might help.

I love it! The binder has pockets for a calculator, pen and really big coupons. I also used single photo album pockets, hole punched them, and labeled one for each store I go to. I then put all of the coupons that I need for my next shopping trips to Walgreens, CVS, Kroger and Wal-mart in their own marked section.

The bad thing about my binder is this:

It sticks out quite a bit when I close it. I could cut it down to a 2 x 2 but I hate too. I'm afraid it would make the binder way too thick and therefore hard to turn the pages, stay closed, ect. It also is just a little big for a purse, even the new jumbo purse I upgraded to. But that was my big specification- it had to fit into a purse.

This binder is now worth more than my wallet! It has loaded giftcards in it to CVS and WAGS plus $18 in ECBs. You can cancel credit cards, but what do you do if someone still your drugstore "money"??? (Cry!)

I have been working on this plan. A plan for my life for the time being. A plan that involves filing for adoption, volunteering at Jonah's school, and saving up for said adoption.

Unfortunately, to save up that means I probably need to do more than coupon. I really should get a job. But I don't want to. Instead I've decided that I'm going to try to substitute teach and maybe look for something in the school system. Maybe.

But then yesterday I subbed my first day in the district (I have subbed a couple of days at the Christian School).

The real question is if I never sub again do I have to get a real job? But honestly, Kroger is looking real good after my experience in this third grade classroom.

It reminded me a lot of when I was in High School and a few fellow classmates and I were talking to a sub. He was an Environmental Science major without a job, so he was subbing. And he was clueless. This is when I first realized that you didn't have to have a teaching degree to sub.

I feel like the third grade teacher was probably in her classroom for 5 minutes this morning and thought "that sub definitely doesn't have any teaching experience". Its not like they were bad or mean or even really disrespectful. They just couldn't stop talking. They just couldn't. It made me so sad because I was suppose to teach multiplication. I had a lot of math hours in college, it was my emphasis. But I was too busy telling everyone to stop talking and threatening nasty notes to their teacher to get too far.

The good thing for me, but maybe not really, is that I'm only signed up to sub at Jonah's school and they have 3 retired teachers who sub there often. They are the first to be called. I WAS trying to figure out how I can sub at other schools and still manage to avoid any type of before or after school care for Jonah. Right now I'm feeling unmotivated to pursue a plan such as that. Maybe I should instead explore getting another degree (maybe in the earth sciences). Or maybe I just give subbing another try (but I do I have to?).

At Jonah's school on Tuesday the whole student body voted. They learned that they didn't have to tell anyone who they voted for, that they there were choices, and that there would be both a winner and a loser.

Jonah announced that he voted for Barak Obama.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because he was first on the paper."

His Kindergarten teacher then shared with me that she asked the class the following day what they had heard about the election. Most of them heard who had won.